Ahmed, Yasar Luqman and Gerke, Jennifer and Park, Hee-Soo and Bayram, Ozgur and Neumann, Piotr and Ni, Min and Dickmanns, Achim and Kim, Sun Chang and Yu, Jae-Hyuk and Braus, Gerhard H. and Ficner, Ralf (2013) The Velvet Family of Fungal Regulators Contains a DNA-Binding Domain Structurally Similar to NF-kB. PLoS Biology, 11 (12). e1001750. ISSN 1545-7885

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Abstract

Morphological development of fungi and their combined production of secondary metabolites are both acting in defence and protection. These processes are mainly coordinated by velvet regulators, which contain a yet functionally and structurally uncharacterized velvet domain. Here we demonstrate that the velvet domain of VosA is a novel DNA-binding motif that specifically recognizes an 11-nucleotide consensus sequence consisting of two motifs in the promoters of key developmental regulatory genes. The crystal structure analysis of the VosA velvet domain revealed an unforeseen structural similarity with the Rel homology domain (RHD) of the mammalian transcription factor NF-kB. Based on this structural similarity several conserved amino acid residues present in all velvet domains have been identified and shown to be essential for the DNA binding ability of VosA. The velvet domain is also involved in dimer formation as seen in the solved crystal structures of the VosA homodimer and the VosA-VelB heterodimer. These findings suggest that defence mechanisms of both fungi and animals might be governed by structurally related DNA-binding transcription factors.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Keywords:	Velvet Family; Fungal Regulators; DNA-Binding Domain; NF-kB;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Science and Engineering > Biology
Item ID:	6242
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001750
Depositing User:	Ozgur Bayram
Date Deposited:	09 Jul 2015 16:15
Journal or Publication Title:	PLoS Biology
Publisher:	Public Library of Science
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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